Beating a Dead Horse

I hate to keep harping on this, but my frustration with the “fiscal conservatives” is so overwhelming and unimaginable.  They just keep beating a dead horse’s ass because of their greed and ignorance in maintaining an obviously very expensive and unsustainable energy system.  It just goes against their basic principles.  Here is just the top of one pile in Canada…and the same is happening here in the US, in Britain, and soon in the rest of the world.  A 30% rate increase to “include ensuring obligations for used nuclear fuel management and decommissioning costs are met.”  The days of cheap nuclear energy were over a long time ago. The horse died, but we’re still grooming it, keeping the stalls clean, and trying to figure out what to do with the body and the pile of manure.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/opgs-rate-hike-for-nuclear-power-adds-burden-to-ontarians-energy-bills-critics-warn/article15396050/?cmpid=rss1&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheGlobeAndMail-HYPolitics+%28The+Globe+and+Mail+-+Politics+News%29

At the other end of the horse, we now have a new economic battle taking form.  Arizona, one of the sunniest areas of the country, with a huge peak demand for electricity, and millions of rooftops gathering sunshine, is fighting the implementation of solar energy---NOT because solar is too expensive, since thousands of homeowners are investing in their own systems, but because it impacts the economics of the local utilities.  Rather than praise the economic virtues of solar and shift their thinking and resources into implementing all the advantages that renewables offer, they are mouthing the Koch brothers greedy lies (they just rejoined ALEC) and keeping Arizona and the rest of the nation from moving forward into the inevitable renewable, sustainable energy future.

http://www.ydr.com/nation-world/ci_24513048/aps-fight-rooftop-solar-firms-over-rates

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/11/12/2928231/arizona-utility-alec-membership/

I’m not a Tea Party supporter, but you’ve got to give them credit for doing the right thing, even if it’s for the wrong reason.

http://www.ydr.com/nation-world/ci_24513048/aps-fight-rooftop-solar-firms-over-rates

So the bottom line today is that solar is NOT too expensive, and its price continues to come DOWN.  It is now cost competitive, affordable, and in the hands of the people.  The powers that be don’t like that.  Too much personal freedom; less centralized regulatory control; least cost alternative.  Isn’t that the mantra of a Republican fiscal conservative?

It’s getting warmer out there…!!!!!

Phase One of Cleaning Up Fukushima

Almost three years after the accidents, TEPCO is about to begin the dangerous and arduous task of removing spent fuel rods from the storage pool at Unit #4.  This reactor was not running when the earthquake/tsunami hit, but hydrogen explosions severely damaged the spent fuel pool and its surrounding buildings.  This is just one of the areas where water has had to be continually pumped in to keep the rods cool and shielded, yielding massive amounts of contaminated water to be dealt with.

The plan is to use a makeshift crane to individually lift the 1500+ fuel assemblies and place them in a heavily shielded cask.  All this needs to happen underwater, and in a heavily damaged building.  The cask, which can hold about 20 assemblies, will be sealed, and then transported “somewhere” away from the nuclear site where the process will be reversed.  The cask will be placed underwater in a new pool, and the fuel assemblies will be removed and re-racked in the new storage area.  The cask will be returned to Unit #$ and the process will begin again.  This is expected to take about two years to complete.

Why TEPCO is not putting the fuel assemblies directly into dry casks for storage is anybody’s guess.  That technology appears to be a US initiative, and Japan probably does not have the technical resources to do it.  Here at Humboldt Bay, we built a storage bunker for six casks.  The spent fuel was loaded directly into the casks (underwater), and then transported a few hundred yards to the bunker.  The advantage of this process is that the fuel does not have to be water-cooled, so you do not have “leakage” problems.  And once a repository is available, you don’t have to re-load the fuel into new transportation casks.  Fukushima will be handling that fuel at least three times in its long life.

I would imagine that cost has a lot to do with this decision.  Here in the US, the casks cost about $2 million each, and all the associated loading and handling brings that total to about $10 million each.  Fukushima would need about 30 casks…total project cost could be $300 million.  Their thinking might be that it is probably cheaper to “kick the can down the road” and put this stuff in a swimming pool, maintain it and hope it doesn’t leak, and let future generations deal with all this later. After the fuel is removed, Unit #4 can be decommissioned.  Since the reactor was not damaged, the decommissioning costs would probably be around $1-2-? billion.

This is the least of TEPCO’s problems.  Units #1,2, & 3 have melted fuel inside their reactors, as well as spent fuel assemblies in their spent fuel pools.  How all this will be handled is anyone’s guess…as one engineer said “the full decommissioning of Fukushima is likely to take many, many decades and include tasks that have never been attempted anywhere in the world.” 

TEPCO estimates the full decommissioning to cost about $50 billion.  I would venture to say that this could actually run into $100-200 billion…many times more that the capital value of Japan’s entire nuclear program, and take 60 years to complete…if ever.  Add to that the other economic costs…social, environmental, etc., and we might begin to understand the significance of this “accident.”  With Chernobyl, nobody really knew/knows the full extent, although there have been many guesses and assumptions.  This was in a rather isolated part of the Russia, and the powers that be kept a pretty good lid on it.  With Japan, a small island with important standing in the modern world, and with the contamination of the Pacific Ocean and all which that signifies, the world is well aware of what is going on, and hopefully will learn its lessons.  This can happen anytime, and anywhere there is a nuclear power plant.  Again, I question the economics of nuclear power.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/10430590/Decommissioning-Fukushima-how-Japan-will-remove-nuclear-fuel-rods-from-damaged-reactor.html

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/just-how-tough-is-it-to-find-workers-to-clean-up-the-fukushima-reactor/280961/

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=111569

The Price of Gasoline

“Chevron said Friday that net income fell 6 percent in the third quarter as weak refining results and higher operating costs offset higher oil and gas production and prices.”

Here in Humboldt County, the price for a gallon of gasoline has recently dropped to $3.99.  It has been between $4.19 and $4.29 for most of the year.

The US is producing the most oil from domestic sources in over 30 years.  Our imports are down significantly, and our exports are way up.

So we are now saving 25 cents on a gallon of gas…whoopee!  But just wait.  The price will go up again, because: “Chevron's worldwide oil and gas production rose 3 percent, or about 70,000 barrels per day compared with last year. Higher oil prices in the U.S. and abroad, and higher natural gas prices in the U.S. also helped boost revenue. But higher operating and exploration expenses offset those gains. The company's oil and gas exploration and production earnings fell 1 percent in the quarter. Refining profit fell by 45 percent in the quarter because input costs such as crude oil stayed high while prices for fuel products such as gasoline fell.”

Drill, Baby, drill…that whole mantra, and everything that was said by Palin, Gingrich, and the rest of those morons was really a lie.  Flat out BS to the American public.  We could drill and frack to their hearts content, become “energy self-sufficient,” produce all our own energy, and we would not be in control of the price of gasoline.  I would expect that Chevron and Exxon (who reported the same kinds of earnings) will now have to manipulate the refining market…time for another explosion or fire, or something to get that price of gasoline back up…this time to $4.49 or more.

It’s the same players and game in the entire fossil fuel and nuclear business.  And we use an enormous amount of our tax dollars to assure the “health” of these energy giants, while some of us squabble about the health care for our citizens.  Makes one want to think??!!

http://news.yahoo.com/chevron-profit-falls-refining-weakness-125005865--finance.html